EPT
Why so few terrans in higher leagues?
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Yew
United States940 Posts
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OmniEulogy
Canada6592 Posts
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Yew
United States940 Posts
On July 28 2011 21:59 OmniEulogy wrote: Those stats are pretty close I'm not sure why you think there's a huge lack of T players. However what I've seen from my friends who play T and other T's who play in plat and under is that they generally don't harass properly. They still try but its not as effective. Then when they realize their errors and fix them they suddenly jump into diamond/masters lol But it takes a lot of multi-tasking that most bronze - plat don't quite have. There's not really a huge lack of terrans, I just thought it was weird that zerg (who many say is the hardest race to use) is played more than terran. I guess it is true though that it requires a lot of multitasking to use T effectively though. | ||
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Sanchez_
Australia40 Posts
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Zapdos_Smithh
Canada2620 Posts
Basically my point is that mechanically, to compete with Protoss and Zerg armies as Terran, you need some basic mechanics specifically in terms of army control. Lower level players have a really difficult time with this because they tend to just 1A. As a result, this is why I believe there is a skew of Terran players near the bottom of the ranks and it evens out at the top. I'm not advocating that terran is imbalanced, if anything I think terran micro has the most potential to have the most cost-effective armies compared to the other two races. I believe that's why you see a lot of GM korean terrans, because they've practiced those mechanics. Back to lower level players, I'm saying more that this basic micro that is necessary to create even exchanges just isn't there in lower level terrans. This micro demand for terrans I believe is the cause for many Terrans just all-inning every game, simply because it's less demanding. Terran macro TvZ is also quite rough but I don't feel like getting into that. Just my opinion though. | ||
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Disquiet
Australia628 Posts
1)Terran has the hardest micro and its macro is harder than zerg, around the same difficulty as protoss. Before the zergs come in and say "BUT LARVA INJECTS", that is the only thing they have to remember to macro, and its at nice regular timings, a bit of practice and you will have it down. Then when you want units all you need to do is press a hotkey and choose the quantity of whatever you want to make. Whereas with terran/protoss you have to constantly check back on all your buildings, try and only queue one unit at a time for optimal macro(means roughly knowing the differing production times of many different units), balance your production facilities with your income and use your macro mechanic. This is not to say terran is weak(see top of KOR ladder), it just takes a lot of skill to use to its full potential. 2.) Zerg was/is perceived as the hardest race, the underdog, while terran was seen as the easy cheese race that took no skill. People love the underdog, and a lot of sc2 players are competitive which means they want to showcase their skill. Who wants to play terran when everyone nobody will respect you for your hard earned wins? What better way to show of your skill than winning with the "hard" race, so many chose zerg. Protoss was somewhat neutral, people just picked it because they liked it. Over time these competitive players who were specifically looking for a challenge by playing the hardest race played more and improved, because they are more motivated by their image/rank. While the more casual players did not play so often. Thus zergs tended to rank up and improve compared to terrans, resulting in the current state of having mostly zergs in the higher leagues. This was very obvious to me last season, the top 8 of my division consisted of 7 zergs and a protoss, zergs tend to play way more games than the other races. | ||
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FuRong
New Zealand3089 Posts
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Tschis
Brazil1511 Posts
On July 28 2011 22:23 FuRong wrote: They're too busy competing in Code S to ladder. Yeah, on american server... | ||
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thehitman
1105 Posts
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
There aren't much good terran players on the NA server because playing a good terran requires a lot of skills. Terran is really mechanically demanding if you want to play a standard game well, especially in tvz. A few months ago, people made this joke about marines countering everything. That's only true if you micro them and it takes up a lot of your apm. You have to do that while making units, scvs, supply depots, adjust rally points, reinforce your army, while dealing with harass with a less mobile army. In comparison, zerg users can a-move through a battle and we can let our money pile up before spending it all at once. Protoss users have by far the easiest macro. So they just spend all their apm with unit control. In general, players on NA are pretty noob. Which is why there are a lack of good terran players (1 base terran players don't count). But in Korea, the players there are very good mechanically and they're showing how much potential the terran race has. Terran armies work best in small groups and that could only be exploited by someone who's very mechanically skilled. Because of this, I believe that terran has the highest skill ceiling. | ||
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Hassybaby
United Kingdom10823 Posts
Protoss have the 4gate in PvP, so that doesn't take long, and ZvZ tends to end pretty quickly. on the flip side, Tv? tend to lean towards macro games My point? Laddering is a amtter of grinding out games. Yes skill comes in a lot, as well as w/l ratios, but if you can get through games quicker, you can get more points. This also is a bit more satisfying. I would like to get a few quick wins under my belt in ladders, and the losses hurt less as well when its quick | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
On July 28 2011 22:02 Yew wrote: There's not really a huge lack of terrans, I just thought it was weird that zerg (who many say is the hardest race to use) is played more than terran. I guess it is true though that it requires a lot of multitasking to use T effectively though. I wouldn't agree with Zerg being the hardest race to learn. In terms of mechanics (which is the biggest barrier that new players face), I think that the game turned out the same as BW - Protoss is the least mechanically challenging, then Zerg, then Terran. | ||
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Disquiet
Australia628 Posts
On July 28 2011 22:51 T.O.P. wrote: I agree with Disquiet, except about protoss being hard to macro (It's actually by far the easiest to macro). Last season Grandmaster zerg here. I played quite a bit of terran and protoss to understand both races better. There aren't much good terran players on the NA server because playing a good terran requires a lot of skills. Terran is really mechanically demanding if you want to play a standard game well, especially in tvz. A few months ago, people made this joke about marines countering everything. That's only true if you micro them and it takes up a lot of your apm. You have to do that while making units, scvs, supply depots, adjust rally points, reinforce your army, while dealing with harass with a less mobile army. In comparison, zerg users can a-move through a battle and we can let our money pile up before spending it all at once. Protoss users have by far the easiest macro. So they just spend all their apm with unit control. In general, players on NA are pretty noob. Which is why there are a lack of good terran players (1 base terran players don't count). But in Korea, the players there are very good mechanically and they're showing how much potential the terran race has. Terran armies work best in small groups and that could only be exploited by someone who's very mechanically skilled. Because of this, I believe that terran has the highest skill ceiling. From the mouth of a zerg, this pleases me, times really are changing :D. As for protoss macro maybe its because I never played protoss very much (maybe ~200 random games, probably about 70 protoss matches) but I never liked that you have to look away from the battle to warp in stuff. Early game missing your warpin timing by even a few seconds because you're microing your 4gate (which is what I mostly did) is really bad, not to mention in something as micro intensive as 4gate you look away for a second and you can lose the battle. Aside from that their macro is probably the easiest but I really didn't like not knowing what was going on in the battle because I had to warp in, with other races I just use hotkeys + rally. The nicest thing about protoss macro though is it doesn't get exponentially harder the later the game goes, infact I think it gets easier, unlike terran (and to some extent zerg). | ||
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Turo
Canada333 Posts
I think they are all roughly the same difficulty, with terran being the hardest. Looking away from what is happening really sucks sometimes. | ||
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Servius_Fulvius
United States947 Posts
On July 28 2011 21:59 OmniEulogy wrote: However what I've seen from my friends who play T and other T's who play in plat and under is that they generally don't harass properly. They still try but its not as effective. Then when they realize their errors and fix them they suddenly jump into diamond/masters lol But it takes a lot of multi-tasking that most bronze - plat don't quite have. I agree. OP plays gold, I play plat, and I have a 70% win rate against terrans. This isn't because I'm amazing at zvt (I'm average) - it's because they don't play to their strengths (mobility, strength of defense, the dreaded tank push, etc.). Most the time when I beat a terran it's because they didn't harass me, I got six bases, maxed out, got Oprah money because I can't spend it fast enough, and enough infestors to fungal all their infantry AND parasite most their tanks while A-moving 130 lings and queuing up 80 more with 10 ultras. They also don't know what to do. If I've got 14 infestors my terran opponent is going to get stomped without ghosts. It doesn't help that most platinum terrans I face are so afraid to move off two bases that I can gain an insurmountable lead. I also rarely encounter an opponent who makes more than 35 scv's. Sorry, but keeping your money low on such a low economy doesn't mean you have good macro... I'll also throw this out there: http://sc2ranks.com/stats/league/all/1/all The global statistics aren't so bad. Masters is almost completely even with win percentages. Globally, zerg has the lowest play rate and win rate until we hit gold. Zerg and toss are dominating plat and diamond, but then it evens out. So if you're facing terrible terrans and tosses in gold league don't worry. Masters terrans will kick your butt! Since the league is so high the other posters claiming that it's a mechanics issue are probably right. Let's also keep in mind that a lot of low-level players don't respond well to changes in the meta game. Some shifts are happening with zerg, especially with zvt becoming more centered around ling/infestor midgames as opposed to muta/ling/bane (you may not see this at the highest levels, but you don't have to look around the bnet forums long to find the lower level complaints - remember, the whiners were zergs not too long ago!). These changes could be attracting new players, players bored with their race and want something fresh, and zergs who race changed but now want to come back because of the exciting new strategies. Who knows? Let's also consider the kinds of strategies we see in lower leagues. Lower leagues have strategies centered around gimmicks that give a major advantage. One of these is this all-in-ish terran siege rush with a dozen marines. My mechanics are good enough that I can destroy the army while only losing 20 lings and a few spine crawlers. Put a silver or bronze zerg in the same situation and I'd bet you they'd crumble. I've noticed that high-silver/gold is about the time all the gimmicks stop working for a lot of players. I also agree that T is the most micro-intensive race in major battles, and these are skills we will see develop over time. I'd be much more interested to see these charts on sc2 ranks compared from season to season... I guess the reason doesn't matter so much. If you're a terran player in plat or diamond on the NA server, get ready for more tvz's and tvp's than tvt's. If you're a protoss player, pvz and pvp will be your new friends. As for zerg, I hope you like zvz because you'll be getting a lot of it! | ||
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plated.rawr
Norway1676 Posts
More honestly though, terran had its focus time during beta, and more people flocked to us then. Protoss has always been popular, both in SC1 and SC2 as it appeals to newer players for some reason. This is not saying it's a race only played by nubs, but my own experience and that of my friends' is that protoss is less intimidating to start with simply because of the power each individual unit holds - slight mismicroing will not cause loss of games early on in your learning curve. Zerg, of course, has had its upswing the last few months. Terran is simply in a valley while the other races are peaking in popularity. It'll change as the metagame changes. | ||
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Bibdy
United States3481 Posts
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
On July 29 2011 00:41 Turo wrote: Yes I would also like to know why you think toss is the easiest. I think they are all roughly the same difficulty, with terran being the hardest. Looking away from what is happening really sucks sometimes. I'm saying protoss macro is the easiest. You could warp in units right into battle. With terran, you actually have to work to reinforce your army. I have a protoss friend who finished top 70 in grandmasters. He uses 1 hotkey all game. He uses 1 for nexus and never hotkeys anything else afterward. | ||
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Razith
Canada431 Posts
But if you're pushing out really late or have a really bad fight and lose everything, it can be ridiculously hard for Terran to come back. | ||
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Cyclone999
Canada331 Posts
(This is in diamond btw) | ||
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Hakker
United States1360 Posts
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Turo
Canada333 Posts
On July 29 2011 02:04 T.O.P. wrote: I'm saying protoss macro is the easiest. You could warp in units right into battle. With terran, you actually have to work to reinforce your army. I have a protoss friend who finished top 70 in grandmasters. He uses 1 hotkey all game. He uses 1 for nexus and never hotkeys anything else afterward. O_O Think of how good your friend could be if he hotkeyed! Honestly though you don't expect to take one instance of your friend being good at this game and say generally toss has easier macro are you? That just doesn't make sense. I think it's really too hard to say definitively whose race has the hardest macro because it's so subjective! Oh well. The quest for balance continues. EDIT: Reread your post, and it seems that what you're saying is that going 4dddaaaa5ss6dd is much more difficult that going Wsccczcccecc5c. And then looking back at your buildings to chrono them. (where the c's are clicks  ) | ||
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critique
United States135 Posts
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Ilikestarcraft
Korea (South)17727 Posts
On July 28 2011 22:21 Disquiet wrote: 2.) Zerg was/is perceived as the hardest race, the underdog, while terran was seen as the easy cheese race that took no skill. People love the underdog, and a lot of sc2 players are competitive which means they want to showcase their skill. Who wants to play terran when everyone nobody will respect you for your hard earned wins? What better way to show of your skill than winning with the "hard" race, so many chose zerg. Protoss was somewhat neutral, people just picked it because they liked it. Over time these competitive players who were specifically looking for a challenge by playing the hardest race played more and improved, because they are more motivated by their image/rank. While the more casual players did not play so often. Thus zergs tended to rank up and improve compared to terrans, resulting in the current state of having mostly zergs in the higher leagues. This was very obvious to me last season, the top 8 of my division consisted of 7 zergs and a protoss, zergs tend to play way more games than the other races. I agree with this so much lol. It was never my main reason but when I played terran in bw I always had this self pride inside since terran was always considered the hardest to play in bw. And its also why protoss has always turned me off alittle because of the whole protoss is the easiest race idea. | ||
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